Transmission line termination refers to strategies or systems used to cancel, mitigate, or dampen signal reflections on transmission lines. Appropriate termination techniques also mitigate other signal integrity problems such as “ringing” oscillations and signal delays. When electronic circuitry employs high-speed components such as fast microprocessors, for example, it is particularly helpful to include proper termination impedance-matching strategies in signal transmission line designs.
As the speed of digital circuits increases, a number of characteristics related to signal integrity and transmission line behavior deteriorate. It can be expected, for example, that as clock rates rise, crosstalk, the unintended influence of a line's electromagnetic field on other signals, increases. For example, when the clock rate of a system doubles, crosstalk tends to double. Further, as signal speeds increase, electromagnetic noise increases, thus affecting signal integrity. Adding an increased number of power and ground connections and more bypass capacitors to shunt electromagnetic noise may help mitigate these effects. At some point, however, new strategies to minimize transmission line reflections and crosstalk will be needed to preserve signal integrity.
At today's speeds, even the passive elements of a high-speed design, features such as the wires and printed circuit board (PCB) traces, for example, as well as chip packages, can contribute significantly to overall signal delay and exacerbate timing and logic errors. The secular move toward ever-increasing speeds without commensurate improvements in transmission line signal management and termination will make signal integrity preservation an escalating issue in high speed electronics.
Driver characteristics may be modified to improve signal integrity. Lower output impedance drivers tend to drive heavily loaded signals more quickly. Drivers with controlled variation in output impedance from cycle to cycle also tend to improve transmission line impedance matching thus inhibiting reflection behavior. Lower transmission line impedances and lower driver output impedances typically result, however, in higher power consumption as lower impedances dissipate more power.
Signal integrity management strategies typically include appropriate termination structures devised to inhibit signal reflections that arise on the transmission line. Unfortunately, termination structures occupy space and dissipate power. Designers in the art, therefore, sometimes avoid adding physical termination structures to board designs.
Two principle techniques are employed in termination structures: source (series) termination and load (parallel) termination. Source or series termination places an impedance (many times a simple resistor) between the signal driver and the transmission line. Load or parallel termination places an impedance parallel with the receiver or load at terminal point of the transmission line. Sometimes the two methods are combined.
Because source impedance is typically more predictable than load impedance, a series termination impedance typically better matches the impedance of a transmission line than does the impedance of a parallel termination scheme. Further, because a series termination, unlike a parallel termination, does not typically consume appreciable power after the line is driven HIGH, a series termination often consumes less power than does a parallel termination. Series terminations typically present, however, a relatively high series impedance that can impede signal integrity by increasing the transmission line RC characteristic.
The basic termination schemes are often seen in a variety of modified forms. One technique adjusts, for example, an on-chip variable parallel termination to match a reference resistor. The on-chip termination is typically a network of parallel resistors controlled by series switches and a feedback circuit. This scheme uses little PCB space but, like many parallel termination schemes, can dissipate power even after the transmission line has been driven HIGH. One example of such a technique is purportedly depicted in U.S. Pat. No. 6,605,958 to Bergman, et al. It also can be difficult to terminate a complex topology like a DRAM address net.
Other techniques have been developed for matching transmission line impedance. One such scheme employs an adaptive transmission line termination including a linearly-variable resistor connected either in series with the sending end of a transmission line or, in parallel with the receiving end of the line. A feedback circuit varies the resistance to constantly match line impedance. This scheme attempts to mitigate cycle-to-cycle variance in transmission line and driver output impedances. When in series mode, this termination does not switch to a lower impedance when the line is driven HIGH and, consequently, does not mitigate the RC effect of the higher impedance that is often characteristic of series termination strategies. An example of this scheme is purportedly depicted in U.S. Pat. No. 5,422,608 to Levesque.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,265,893 to Bates depicts a system in which drivers are coupled to different points on a transmission line. The drivers each include a transistor in series with a resistance that matches the transmission line impedance. The transistor at one driver is ON to provide a load end parallel termination whenever another driver might be active. This system and many others like it, allow multiple devices to drive signals on the same transmission line, but they still exhibit problems inherent to parallel termination schemes such as higher power consumption and imprecise impedance matching, for example.
In any of the known termination schemes, when no load termination is used, the input impedance of the receiver is present at the load end of the transmission line. This impedance is typically a complex value with capacitive and resistive components. Because the typical receiver input resistance is higher than the transmission line impedance, the mismatch induces a reflection. This reflection wave or impulse can travel with an uncontrolled characteristic on the transmission line and impede or, in some cases, prevent accurate signal reception.
What is needed, therefore, is a technique and system for terminating a transmission line to reduce reflections, improve signal integrity, and drive the line HIGH quickly while presenting lower impedances and consuming minimal PCB space.